On May 17th (this Friday), Microsoft will be closing down the Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.x. This was a pretty short-lived endeavor that made app purchasing and downloading a bit easier on the old Windows Mobile compared to having to manually download installation files, copy them to your device, and install them from there. You could easily access the Windows Mobile Marketplace both from the on-device app as well as the web browser. If you’re still using a good old Windows Mobile classic device or think you may want to go back and use one someday, you may want to archive the installation CAB files for any of the apps that you may have purchased or downloaded from the Windows Mobile Marketplace so that you might be able to reinstall them after the Marketplace closes this week. Here’s what you need to do…

First visit you’ll want to backup the original WMMarketplaceFullClient.exe from the “Windows” folder. Just copy it to some other location. Then visit XDA-Developers and download the patched/hacked version of the Marketplace app. It’s designed to simply crash right after downloading the cab that you buy through the marketplace just before the installation and deletion of the original CAB file happens.

So next you’ll install the patched Marketplace, then run it and download one of the applications you’ve already bought or anything you’d like to archive. The Marketplace will quit by itself and after that happens, go to Application Data\Volatile\ and that’s the folder where you’ll find the CAB or Widget file that you downloaded. Copy it to a different location in order to create the archive so that you can reinstall the application in the future. Next, launch Marketplace again and repeat with another app that you’d like to archive.

After you’re done you may want the original functional Marketplace app back. Just copy the backup version of WMMarketplaceFullClient.exe back to the “windows” folder and overwrite the patched one.